In September of this year, Microsoft announced that they would soon be releasing an optional update designed to remove the Adobe Flash Player from any machine applying the update, and rendering it impossible for Flash to be reinstalled on that device.
It's easy to understand how and why the company reached the decision to do this. Flash was one of the seminal technologies that defined the early web, and millions of websites relied heavily on it to display dynamic content.
Unfortunately, it also became an easy target for hackers, who found innumerable ways of abusing Flash to infect target systems around the world. Things got so bad that finally, all of the major web browsers announced they were ending support for the technology.
Recently, one or more Amazon employees disclosed customer email addresses to an unknown third party, prompting Amazon to send a notification email out to impacted customers which reads as follows:
"We are writing to let you know that your e-mail address was disclosed by an Amazon employee to a third-party in violation of our policies. As a result, we have fired the employee, referred them to law enforcement, and are supporting law enforcement's criminal prosecution."
"No other information related to your account was shared. This is not a result of anything you have done and there is no need for you to take any action. We apologize for this incident."
Malware comes in all shapes and sizes. Some strains copy and encrypt files. Others serve annoying ads.
Still others work quietly in the background, mining this or that cryptocurrency using your computer's processing power to do it.
GravityRAT is a different sort of creature. It has been actively developed since at least 2015 by Pakistani hacker groups, and has been used primarily against military installations in India. As such, it's not the sort of malware your IT staff is likely to have a face to face encounter with unless you're doing contract work with the Indian military. It is interesting, however, and worth taking a closer look at.
Score one for the good guys. A team led by Microsoft's DCU (Digital Crimes Unit) that includes Symantec, NTT Ltd, ESET, and Lumen's Black Lotus Labs is working on something new. They have launched a sustained, coordinated attack on Trickbot's infrastructure in a bid to destroy it, preventing the hackers who control it from making and launching new campaigns against servers around the world.
Microsoft fired the opening shots in the campaign against the group, securing permission from the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to take out 19 IP addresses that Trickbot's handlers used to control infected computers.
Do you have a solid state drive (SSD) inside your PC? An increasing percentage of newer models are including them, taking advantage of their better speeds, relative to HDDs.
Unfortunately, a recent Microsoft Windows 10 update wasn't very kind to SSD owners, and caused SSDs to defrag much more frequently than is recommended, which had the effect of shortening their useful lives.
The company has since corrected the issue with another patch, and recently, it has been reported that they've gone a step further. As of now, at least for Windows Insiders, build 20226 includes a new series of alerts designed to draw users' attention to hardware issues that could potentially impact the performance of SSDs and lead to failure.
